Change of plans

 I originally was going to make a lasagna for Handsome Son's monthly dinner-with-Mom event. Then, the noodles made and stored in the freezer, logistics intervened.

His free evening is Wednesday, and some of the lasagna ingredients are in my Misfits box which arrives Friday.  They've extended their range to include dairy and eggs as well as fish and meat. This is good, if it works, organic food at reduced prices, at the door, saves me a big shop as well as $$.

I do like to get out and shop for a few items, since for a single older lady, it's a chance to see other humans, always a good thing. But a longer list means more exposure and more waiting at the checkout, which I'd rather not do 

So I took advantage of the chance of ordering eggs and dairy in addition to the produce,and changed my Wednesday plans. When the ingredients arrive, I can make the lasagna and freeze it for a future dinner.

Meanwhile here's the new plan:

To learn to pronounce it, go to the Ottolenghi Test Kitchen YouTube channel. The cook starts with how to say it. It's a recipe from Bahrain, where she's from.

It's also, like a lot of Ottolenghi, quite a performance to produce. Many ingredients, many lovely spices. 

I don't have access to prawns, so it's going to be the rest of my Misfits shrimp, smaller but okay. And I will add in halibut, diced.

Today I started with a vegetable stock I made from my frozen bag of peelings from recent Misfits boxes. There's enough over for a future soup. And specially for this recipe, it included a stick of cinnamon. The house smelt very savory today.

Here's the fridge shelf getting ready for the Big Cooking Caper

Left to right, stock, measured ahead, ginger, almond slices, golden raisins, cooked baby Bella mushrooms.

Then on today's abbreviated shopping trip, the all important basmati rice base

So posh it comes with its own recipe sheet and philosophy of life.

Tomorrow I'll get the fish organized.

What this is about is,: rice with onions, garlic, tomatoes and various spices, with heavily spiced and marinated shrimp, and here halibut, heaped on top of it.

This includes a lot of my favorite things. And I suspect it will make plenty. It will involve a lot of the contents of my three, count them, spice shelves. Including whole cardamom pods, a big fave.

It's just not for the faint hearted. 

Meanwhile I'd run out of bread, while I was organizing this fancy exotic stuff. So  I  made a batch of walnut biscuits 

while I was hanging about in the kitchen trying to conclude that this Bahraini adventure was a good change of plan. Some biscuits went next door, hot from the oven.

Whatever comes of it, and I have had good results from Ottolenghi recipes, I can always quote my mom: it's all good ingredients!

Dessert, in case you wondered, is that dish of handmade chocolates you saw yesterday.

It's all good, even while I'm wondering why I am incapable of just planning a simple, easy dinner for handsome Son. Since it's only once a month, it's an event, I guess.

Stop me before I cook again...

Today I found myself more or less by accident, cooking and baking up a storm. All set to make the Ottolenghi Broccoli and Gorgonzola pie, I also noticed I didn't have a nice little something for afternoon tea.  

So I made a carrot bread while I was thinking about the pie.  I'd noticed the grated carrots in the freezer while I was finding the broccoli and leeks for the pie, and remembered I meant to use it for bread.

So, more cooking than intended took place. The carrot bread was fine, not too difficult, from my old Amish cookbook, simple reliable stuff.

And the Ottolenghi pie was as anticipated, very labor intensive, involving gorgonzola (I subbed another blue cheese, just as good) and frozen puff pastry, which I never used before, having not had much interest in premade crusts.  But I thought oh well, I'll try it.

And since I had to bake it blind first, I scrambled to find something to take the place of dried beans which I didn't have any of, and used lentils, which worked fine, on top of the parchment paper. 

In case this para is a mystery to you: when you bake a pie shell empty, i.e. blind, you have to weigh it down a bit so it doesn't balloon up and all over making it impossible to fill.  So something that won't cook but will just sit there is the ticket. Often that means dried beans, but I didn't have any.  Then it's fun trying to remove the beans and parchment paper after the blind baking is done and the pastry has done its best to puff out over the paper trapping it..

Meanwhile, back at the stove, or cooker. as brit cooks charmingly put it, do they call a cup a drinker, I wonder, but I digress,  the broccoli is boiled and cooled, the leeks are sauteed in butter, but I did half and half olive oil and butter.  

Then you're in a whirl of making the sauce involving various herbs, which I had to run out and cut, and the cheese, and a beaten egg, and a mixture of cream, I subbed plain yogurt, and some water and other things, it's a blur now.  No pix of the process, too many implements and surfaces and materials flying about!

The shell was actually quite fun to roll out, and then had to be in the freezer for a while, before being baked blind, then cooled, then it was filled with the leeks, the sauce, and the broccoli being sort of added on top. Then the pie lid, fitted on, and pressed around the edges to make it filling proof, was brushed with the egg to glaze it, and it went in to bake.

And came out looking amazingly like the picture in the book. Except they have a nicer dish.

 It's browner than it looks in my pic, and is amazingly filling. This will be about a week's food!  maybe a helping will cross the street to friends, who already got a nice couple of slices of the carrot bread.

And Handsome Son is coming over this evening briefly, so maybe he'll bear off a helping, too.  

Me, I needed a little rest after that activity.   I threw myself into the recliner with a slice of carrot bread, little spoonful of sour cream spread on top, and a strong cup of English breakfast tea. Beats me how cooks put on weight, considering the mileage I put in for this pie.  It's an aerobic activity. 

 
Then later for supper,  a serving of pie with a nice merlot.  Filling isn't in it!  this stuff could hold off an army.  As usual, I wonder if it freezes..

Jerusalem, an education as well as a cookbook

The Bite Club this week introduced us to Ottolenghi and Tamimi, whose cookbook Jerusalem I've started on, with two others on reserve at the library.

What a contrast to the boredom of the last cookbook.  This one is full of life and history and the sort of food I really want to make, many spices, wonderful history of the culture and conflicts in both the city and the food.  Written by an Arab and a Jew, both of whom grew up in Jerusalem, in different quarters, could be different planets, but both of whom have a great interest in the cultural and historical significance of food, not to mention its politics. And the book has a kind of padded cover, which lends an air of friendliness and importance, at the same time.

This morning, I used my early morning hour (had to be up and about to take one med, then wait half an hour to take the other, then another half hour before I can eat anything, this is a real hardship! only once a week, so I try to use the time in some way) anyway, I used that hour to do something interesting other than feel hungry and sorry for myself.

So I made Baharat, a spice mixture, for use over the next few weeks in whatever strikes my fancy.  

The smells as I ground all the spices together in my trusty coffee grinder, and the resulting warm and amazing blend, now in a jar in the fridge, were just exciting. I didn't have cardamom, but I think it's still great anyway. If I get some, haven't had it in the house in years, since my serious curry making days, I'll just grind and add it in, I think.

And I already have plans for a roasted sweet potato and fruit dish, which I think I'll do today.  And a kohlrabi salad.  I was introduced to kohlrabi decades ago, in student days in northwestern England, when I rented a room at the top of an old house with a big back yard. 
 
Another tenant had arranged to garden a section of it and Alan was always trying out new and exotic vegetables, including kohlrabi, which looks like it landed from outer space, but is crisp and very good in salads. You can cook it too, but I think I'd keep it raw.  And the Asian store routinely stocks it. So this is literally a return to my green and salad days, as well as a new recipe to me.

I had no idea that the history of food was so interesting before Diane, the doughty leader of the Bite Club and reference librarian as well as great cook, introduced a lot of ideas, beyond just making meals, to us all.  One of the nicest things I've done for myself in some time was to join.